And a Joyous and Prosperous New Year, too!

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and New Year celebration.  For me, it has been a great season for getting together with family and friends, which of course included food and feasting.

One of my favorite things to do the week between Christmas and New Year is to hit the stores for their after Christmas sales.  Instead of loading up on wrapping paper and ornaments (which of course I've done in the past but seem to always tuck away in the deepest corner of my garage) I like to shop for food and baking mixes at Crate and Barrel, Cost Plus World Market, Williams Sonoma and Sur La Table.  By then, the imported food products and gourmet mixes are marked 50-75% off.  Here are a few of my purchases.

Obviously, there were quite a few gingerbread flavored goods marked down so I stocked up.  Here's my gripe though (please bear with me).  When will Baskin Robbins and the rest of the ice cream manufactureres ever come up with gingerbread ice cream?  Am I going to have to break down and buy an ice cream maker for goodness sakes?  I also stopped by Red Robbin for my annual gingy shake and was told they were sold out due to a gingerbread syrup shortage.  Huh?  Are you kidding me?

Anyway, rant and rave over..back to regular programming.  For new year's eve, I decided to bake the gingerbread cupcakes and look how CUTE they turned out.

Isn't this just the cutest village of gingerbread boys and girls?

My friend Lynn came over for our annual "sew-in".  We worked on our quilting/sewing projects and drank champagne, watched TV and snacked on Lynn's homemade pecan pie.  Yum!

Here we are toasting to a joyful, prosperous and blessed new year.

Cheers to 2012!  May this coming year bring us all good health, good fortune, abundant friends and family and enough time in a day to work on all our quilting projects.